Toolkit: Online Courses With a Twist – Rapid Course

“Yukon Learning is breaking some new ground with Rapid Course. If they can find a way to expand both the number of authoring tools supported as well as the number and variety of courses in their library, their products will be an attractive option for eLearning developers.”

The folks at Yukon Learning have followed up on their Cameo learning
reinforcement tool with another promising product that provides some unique
twists on a familiar idea.

Launched at the DevLearn conference last year in Las Vegas,
Rapid Course is an online library of eLearning courses. That is not a new idea, but there are two key
features that make Rapid Course unique.
First is their “Buy the Course, Get the Source” model. (Figure 1) That means that when you purchase
a course from their website, you get not only the published course files, but
also the source files needed so that you can customize the course to your needs.

Figure 1: The Rapid Course Website

"Buy the Course, Get the Source"

This is a bit of a paradigm shift for many of us who have
been in the eLearning field for a while.
Instead of offering only the published SCORM files for the course, your
download package also includes all the source files used to create and publish
the course. These files are currently
available in the Articulate format and include images, audio, video, and other
resources.

Think of it as a cross between an off-the-shelf and a
customized course … with you, the eLearning professional, providing the
customization. This can include simple
things like adding your company logo or changing the color scheme, to making
changes to the actual content and adding your own resources and job aids. It’s
up to you.

There are currently forty courses available online at the
Rapid Course website. The courses are on
topics that are “universal” in nature, subjects like Communication Skills, Coaching,
and E-Mail Etiquette. (Figure 2) The universal nature of the courses means that
the content would be relevant to a wider target audience, which quickens the
ROI for the user.

Figure 2: The Rapid Course on Negotiation Styles

To make the courses more visually appealing and engaging,
Yukon Learning partnered with a company called Narrator Files to provide images
and professional narration. Some of the
courses offer video segments as well.

I have long been a skeptic of ready-made courses because
more often than not it seems that the vendors spent more time working on
visuals than on instructional design. However, to me it appears that the team
at Yukon Learning spent a lot of time up front developing a set of
instructionally sound templates to build the courses. This makes changing or adding new content relatively
quick and easy. (Figures 3 and 4) In addition, there are tutorials on the Rapid
Course site to help you make these and other changes to your courses.

Figure 3: The Rapid Course templates are set up to make
changing the content fairly simple.

Figure 4: It is possible to change any or all of the content
in the templates.

One price fits all

The second unique feature of Rapid Course is their
distribution model. Unlike many other
online eLearning libraries that price courses on a per-seat basis, Rapid Course
uses a “one price fits all” approach.
That means that you pay the same price whether you have 100 learners or
100,000.

Prices currently range from $2,920 to $6,580 based on both
the content and duration or seat-time of the course. Volume and other discounts are available as
well. The only caveat is that you can only
use the courses for your organization and that they cannot be repackaged,
resold, or redistributed to others outside your organization.

The reach of Rapid Course has recently expanded to the United
Kingdom with British versions of many popular courses offered in Europe by
Yukon Learning’s partner, Omniplex. The
company has plans to offer courses via a partner in Australia later in 2012.

Rapid Course limitations

While Rapid Course seems to offer great value for the do-it-yourselfer,
there are some limitations, as is the case with any product or service.

The courses are currently available only in the
Articulate format. While the tools from
Articulate are popular, offering the courses in this format alone leaves a lot
of us on the sideline.

As a new product, there are only forty courses
currently available in the library. Yukon
Learning is partnering with several content providers to expand the library,
with as many as 200 courses planned by year end.

To match the audio narration for a given course,
you will need to use the voice talent from Yukon Learning’s partner, Narrator
Files. While this is a limitation, you
get all of the necessary contact information with your course, including the
specific narrator(s) used, and the narration services provided are high quality
and affordable. Since you get all of the
course files including audio, you could always choose to record your own
narration or use another provider.

Overall, I think Yukon Learning is breaking some new ground
with Rapid Course. If they can find a
way to expand both the number of authoring tools supported as well as the
number and variety of courses in their library, their products will be an
attractive option for eLearning developers.

We thought the client had a straightforward project. Then we read the details: “Deliver the entire training solution with just four small, IT-enabled classrooms. E-Learning should be engaging and interactive, but must be developed without the use of Flash animations, large graphics, audio, or video. It must run from a browser, not require plug-ins or software, and it must also run from a CD.”

With advances in technology, personalized learning is coming into its own after years of discussion and false starts. In
particular, viral-implementation techniques and value-chain analysis can greatly assist adoption of personalization by
providing what amounts to scaffolding and by reducing resistance to change from employees and management alike. Here
are some ideas you will find useful!